Share This Story!

5 kinds of hepatitis all attack one organ in the body

All five kinds of hepatitis — A, B, C, D and E — target the liver but do so in different ways with different outcomes, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They're all called hepatitis is because the word itself, from the Greek hepar + itis, means liver inflammation.

All five kinds of hepatitis — A, B, C, D and E — target the liver but do so in different ways with different outcomes, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The reason they're all called hepatitis is because the word itself, from the Greek hepar + itis, means liver inflammation.

Each form of hepatitis starts with a virus. Vaccines can prevent hepatitis A and hepatitis B, but no vaccines have been developed to protect against the other three diseases.

Children born after 1999 have been routinely received the hepatitis A vaccine, first made available in 1995. For adults, two vaccinations spaced six months apart provide lifelong protection.

U.S. infants who weigh about 4½ pounds or more generally are vaccinated for hepatitis B at birth. Their mothers also are tested for the virus while they are pregnant because the infection can be passed from an infected woman to her baby at birth.

The most common types of the inflammatory disease are hepatitis A, B and C.

A little about each illness:

• Hepatitis A is generally a short-term sickness, and most people who contract it will recover with no lasting effects. It is transmitted when the feces of an infected person comes in contact with food, water or another person's mouth.

It's the big reason you see signs in restaurant restrooms saying that all employees must wash their hands after going to the bathroom. In 2016, about 4,000 cases in the U.S. were diagnosed; some people never know they've had the infection but antibodies that remain in the bloodstream are a marker for a previous infection.

• Hepatitis B can become a long-term, chronic infection. It is transmitted when blood, semen or other bodily fluid from an infected person enters the body of an uninfected person.

Having sex, sharing needles or syringes, or being born of an infected mother are all ways that a person with hepatitis B can transmit the virus to an uninfected person. Chronic hepatitis B can lead to cirrhosis, a scarring of the liver that makes it difficult for the organ to function, or liver cancer.

In 2016, a little more than 3,200 cases were reported to the CDC, but researchers estimate that the actual number of people with the disease is approaching 21,000.

• Hepatitis C usually develops into a chronic, long-term infection that can cause serious liver damage and even liver cancer. People born from 1945 to 1965 are 5 times more likely to have hepatitis C than other age groups, researchers say.

This type of hepatitis used to be spread primarily through blood transfusions and transplanted organs from infected donors, but screening begun in the early 1990s virtually eliminated that problem. Now most cases come when drug users share needles and syringes.

In 2016, almost 3,000 cases were reported to the CDC, but researchers estimate the actual number of people with the disease tops 41,000.

If you've seen TV commercials touting a cure for hepatitis, they probably were aimed at hepatitis C patients. But the first of the drugs, Harvoni and an earlier version called Sovaldi, were extremely expensive when they initially came out — $1,000 per pill or more for 12 weeks of treatment.

• Hepatitis D is not common in the United States and develops only in people who already have hepatitis B.

Though no vaccine for this virus exists, it can be prevented in people who don't have hepatitis B simply by getting vaccinated for hepatitis B.

• Hepatitis E also is rare in the United States. While it's easy to contract — inadvertently ingesting even a small amount of feces from an infected person will result in an infection — the human body generally can combat it without any drugs.

Contaminated water in areas with poor sanitation is its usual transmission route though eating raw or undercooked pig or deer with the virus is another way to become infected.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA TODAY research